We had known the eclipse was coming for years. Some people planned long in advance, booking flights and rooms in places within the path of totality. Others, like Lina and I, acted more on the spur of the moment. We drove north to Morrisville, VT on the morning of April 8, where we watched the eclipse from the cemetery where our friend Anne is buried, in the company of her brother, his wife and their daughter. The skies were clear, the day lovely.
With us in the cemetery were a large group from Worcester, MA; and a smaller company of six Brooklynites who had driven four hours to Ithaca, NY, found the skies cloudy and driven four more hours to northern Vermont! Two hound dogs rounded out the party.
My sons’ family watched the eclipse from just over the border into Canada. Photo by Sam Blair.
We watched closely with our eclipse glasses to see the moment when the moon first began to cover the sun. The moon’s slow progress toward totality was barely noticeable unless we were watching, as the light hardly seemed to dim. But then we entered an early twilight, which deepened, until, suddenly, it was dark. Not pitch dark, instead a deep dusk. Watching through eclipse glasses, I saw nothing.
I realized: I can take the glasses off now! And there was the glorious corona of the sun, with a small light pulsing at about 6:30 on the face of the disc.
Image from Adobe Stock
This magic moment lasted for three minutes, and then, again suddenly, there was a tiny sliver of the sun showing. Back with the glasses, and early dawn, and before long, even though much of the sun was still covered, the landscape was bright.
Is death like this?
We’ve known for years that we will one day die. As we get older, preparations are made (or not). We are now aware that death could come at any moment, as it already has for some of our friends.
Some of us enter a period of months or days when we know our death is imminent, as do all those around us. We are watching for it. Others of us die without warning (although we have all been warned). In either case, the light suddenly goes out.
But we have been looking through a glass darkly. When we remove that glass, will we see GLORY ?
Perhaps the vision we have at the moment of our death will not last. Maybe we’ll enter into a new phase of our life, the light returning to illuminate – a different landscape?
We truly don’t know. At least I don’t. I am curious to know the answers. One day I believe I will.
Change is a constant in our travels (and in our lives). As we revisit people and places, we see much that has changed, and much that has not.
Pani Beach was a deserted black sand beach in 1987. It still faces the setting sun and Vietnam, over the horizon; and to the north the mountains of Zambales Province. But it is full of people at 7AM on a Sunday morning.
Buildings rise along the beach behind the parking lot where once stood only a few primitive shelters.
The path to the beach is lined with resorts and restaurants.
A sign announces that this is a turtle nesting area. I’ve no idea how the nesting turtles are protected,
for the beach is built up now to left and right.
Not only people enjoy Pani Beach now!
The water is still clear and lovely. Memories of trips to the beach with our co-workers and refugee friends, of soccer games, grilled fish and sunset swims, are still strong, and I’m happy that many people are now enjoying the sea.
The refugees all left Morong almost 30 years ago. An echo remains: a restaurant that advertises hutieu or Vietnamese noodle soup. The suffix “-an” means a place where something happens, especially food, so a “hutieu-an” is a place where you can eat hutieu.
Another menu advertises typical Filipino food except for the banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich.
We drove up from the coast to the site of the Philippine Refugee Processing Center. (I have written about PRPC often before, and you’ll find those posts at the end of this one.). We enter through the former Phase III and Phase II, where thousands of refugees once lived, and where the classrooms our teachers taught in were also located. The buildings are almost all gone now, as they have been for several decades.
A Khmer monument, the Bayon of Siem Reap, has been preserved.
Stately trees line the street that leads to the memorial to the South Vietnamese Army.
Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, still stands serenely at the Vietnamese Buddhist temple,
and the view over the valley toward Kanawan (see my last post) is as beautiful as ever.
The center of the camp, where PRPC’s administrative buildings stood, has been preserved along with some of the staff housing. The buildings have been repurposed.
As we drive further in, beyond the center, we enter what used to be Phase I. In 2018, when we took the next pictures, nature had reclaimed the area. Buildings were falling down if not entirely gone.
In 2018, all we were able to locate of the former market were some concrete foundations. Other than an area set aside as a storage yard for large steel beams used in building highway bridges, Phase I was empty. Nothing remained to show that thousands of people once lived and worked here.
Another Cambodian monument stood below the Buddhist temple at the top of the camp, which by 2018 had succumbed to rain, termites and scavenging. There was little left of it.
This past weekend I was shocked to find a huge construction site.
The Philippine military is building an immense base, and I was told that it will become the national headquarters of the Philippine Army, and that other armed services will also be housed there. This plan has been in the works a long time. I can’t help wondering if the base’s proximity to the West Philippine Sea (or the South China Sea as some call it), the site of tense naval confrontations with Chinese boats encroaching on Philippine waters, has something to do with the move.
The overgrown refugee neighborhoods have been transformed. Little vegetation remains.
We saw deep ditches and what looked like bunkers below the road. Apparently the base will be home not only to soldiers but to munitions and military equipment. Kanawan lies beyond the flattened area in the distance.
The only remnant of the refugee presence in Phase I is the Lao monument, the That Luang, modeled after the stupa in the center of Vientiane. It will soon be hidden from view by the building rising in front.
50 years ago, this tract of land was the ancestral land of the tribal people of Kanawan, the Aeta or Negritos. Magnificent mango trees grew there. The land was taken from them by the Philippine government in order to house the estimated 400,000 refugees who passed through PRPC from 1980 to 1995 – a noble cause, and yet a loss not fully compensated. This injustice motivated Lina to start her ministry in Kanawan 40 years ago. The refugee program ended, and the land reverted to scrubby forest. Now, a military base is rising there at the cost of tens of millions of dollars. Such transformations in 50 years!
What if a tiny fraction of that money were allocated to the needs of the people of Kanawan? Their water has been mostly diverted for the farms in the valley. Pastor Domulot is doing a great amount with the support Kanawan receives, as described in my last post. I can imagine how much more could be done with 1% of 1% of the resources being poured into the military.
Pardon my preaching, but I’m sure the reader can appreciate the parallel to the choices made by our government in the United States.
I wrote about the concept of “ancestral domain” and even mentioned the Aeta of Kanawan in this post from our medical mission in January to the Tagbanua of Coron:
It is March 11. Two days ago, Lina and I, Edna and Nani and a group of friends visited Kanawan again.
I suggest you read this article, written in the fall of 2013, for background on Kanawan and Lina’s long involvement there. You’ll see some photos which you can compare to the long photo gallery coming up in this post. Much has changed, and much looks as it did years ago.
Our group prepares to leave the seashore to drive up to the village of Kanawan. The folks in back were staff for the Philippine Baptist Refugee Ministries who worked in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center.
As we neared the village, a group of little boys burst from the banana groves on the side of the road and dashed up the road at astounding speed. We don’t know what they were running from!
Kanawan village has grown from about 35 families back in the 1980s to a population of 700 registered voters. The residents have built many new houses, but the center of the village is still shaded and quiet.
Lina has three generations of Kanawan friends
including Birgit (named after our German nurse friend who worked here) and her baby. Lina poses below with Birgit’s parents, Birgit and child.
One obvious change is the advent of the cell phone.
This little boy is digging a hole with great energy. I’m sure other children still play the games we’ve photographed before, with pebbles and flip flops.
Pastor Domulot took me, Lina and Edith to see a farm below the village. Along the path we met these girls who’d been gathering cashew nuts.
They had discarded the overripe fruits, which perfumed the air with a pleasant sweetness.
Here’s a cashew nut growing at the end of a very young fruit, and
here are the mature fruit and nut. The fruits are delicious, I am told, but as cashew is closely related to poison ivy, I’ve never tried them. The nuts, when roasted, are safe to eat for most people allergic to poison ivy, as the roasting drives off the volatile oils that might cause a reaction.
Pigs greeted us when we arrived at the farm.
This very friendly little fellow could not get enough of having his head scratched. Notice his eyes are closed!
Pastor Domulot shows us the feed that he makes for the pigs. He grinds up napier grass, the leaves of kakawate and malunggay or Moringa (both sources of nitrogen), banana trunks (high in potassium), rice bran, tubers like cassava and more. This nutritious mixture ferments in large barrels.
It smells sweet!
His nephew fabricated the grinder, run on diesel, to make the feed.
Chickens, turkeys and tilapia (in the fish pond) live on this tiny farm.
Beautiful mango trees grow in Kanawan and, some years, yield lots of fruit.
Pastor Domulot will put compost in the bottom of these holes before the rains arrive, and then he’ll plant talong (eggplant) and other vegetables.
His nephew Larry lives in a small nipa hut with his wife and daughter. He too is a pastor.
Dogs relax in the shade.
Three men were headed into the forest to harvest honey. They will place the honeycomb in this ingeniously made container that combines traditional basketry with the blessings of modern plastic!
We ate a delicious lunch at a sturdy bamboo table.
I was touched and amused to see the pastor’s name scratched into the bamboo!
Here’s the school today. It has been upgraded since 2005. You can compare an old photo in the post from 2013.
The hanging bridge still swings above the river.
Up from the bridge, a bamboo arch welcomes visitors to Kanawan.
The water is very low. Families picnic on the sand bars and, up to the left, small stone dikes have been built to create swimming pools.
I used to swim above the dam, where the water is deeper and, in rainy season, swift. It was delightful. Also home to dark freshwater shrimp.
The bridge isn’t wide enough for cars, but a stream of motorcycles goes up and down every day. We never saw any of these back in the late 1980s!
On our way to visit friends in Morong, the town below the site of the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, we passed through Balanga, the capital of the Province of Bataan (the Bataan of the Death March).
Colorful signs and tents in the plaza drew our attention.
The Women’s Rights Festival (in connection with International Women’s Day) celebrates “KaBaRo”: the Women’s Movement of Bataan for Nature, Rights and Transformation.
“Abante Babae” means “Forward, Women.” This tent has information about Amnesty International’s work for human rights.
The Young Bataeños Environmental Advocacy Network focuses on many issues, among them the reduction of plastics use.
A table represents the cause of Palestinian rights.
The largest presence, and the most interesting to me, is the display from the Nuclear-Free Bataan Movement and the Coal-Free Bataan Movement, whose leader Gloria Capitan is celebrated in a large poster on the right as a “She Hero”.
My family arrived in the Philippines in 1987, two years after a vigorous citizens movement forced the government of Ferdinand Marcos to abandon its plans to open the BNPP (Bataan Nuclear Power Plant), which we called Westinghouse after the main contractor. This movement was a precursor to the massive protest movement of early 1986, called “People Power” or “the EDSA Revolution,” that forced the Marcoses to flee the Philippines.
The Clamshell Alliance of the late 1970s did not succeed in preventing the Seabrook nuclear power plant in Seabrook, NH from opening; but like the Nuclear Free Bataan Movement, it did have a national, even international, ripple effect in slowing and halting the construction of further nuclear power plants.
On our way to the Refuge Processing Center, we drove past the large compound that housed the workers at Westinghouse, and then by the fenced area where the plant still stands. In addition to the many arguments that can be marshaled against nuclear power, this plant has a very important design flaw: it sits on top of a geological fault line!
The two photos below, subtitled “Then and Now,” tell the story of the Nuclear-Free Bataan Movement.
I learned that the plant raised its ugly head again in 2009, and once again a citizen movement prevented its opening.
I also learned that the son of Ferdinand Marcos, the current president Bongbong Marcos, wants to commission the plant. He considers this part of his father’s unfinished legacy. I hope that the vigorous protest movement that has gathered will again succeed. The fault line has not gone away.
The word “welga” may sound familiar. Do you remember “Huelga” from the farmworkers’ movement? It means “Strike.” One poster says: “Fight for the Success of the People’s Strike.”
This petition lists multiple reasons why the BNPP should never be started up and demands its closure.
I did not try to understand all the words. I do understand that protest is alive and well in the Philippines, and this heartens me. A young activist spoke with me at length about the fight against nuclear power. I was filmed talking to him: I suppose that it’s a bit unusual for a silver-haired American to stop by for a visit! If that encourages them, great.
It certainly encourages me to see young people taking up the struggle against authoritarian government, here as well as in my home country. We need their energy and wisdom, and I believe they need ours.
Lina and I are nearing the end of a three month journey to Asia, to be with family and friends in the Philippines and also on the mainland of Southeast Asia. I experience our lives as a ministry of listening and connection. As we travel, we reunite with old friends – a childhood playmate whom Lina had not seen for 52 years; our beloved Bac Hien in Hanoi, now in her 90s and in bed most of the time, but still laughing about the times we shared 32 years ago; and many others. We make new friends. We bring encouragement and support to people struggling with illness, finances, loss and uncertainty. We receive their stories and learn from them.
Sometimes we bring together groups of people who don’t know each other but “should” know each other. I sat and watched the interactions of people involved in three different campus ministries in and around Iloilo City. Many did not know each other. Lina took the lead in inviting this group to eat together. I believe they will now be able to share their gifts with each other.
I can say that Spirit has been journeying with us. Yet where are the moments of trumpet fanfare when – Ta Da! – Spirit makes a grand entrance? I remember those!
I went shopping today for toilet paper. A very prosaic task, and a good time to reflect on that question. As I left the supermarket, I passed a young girl, perhaps twelve. She was selling turon, a banana fried in a flaky crust. I love turon but didn’t feel like buying any, so I said no, thank you, and moved on. “Would you like to try one?” she persisted. I again said no and walked on.
As I was about to exit the parking lot, I smiled and thought to myself: “Now that was not Spirit at work.” When she was young, Lina made and sold snacks to fund her education. A few American children still sell lemonade by the sidewalk, but many more children in the Philippines rely on their small earnings to get by. I knew this and yet ….
I turned around and looked for the girl but didn’t see her. Nevertheless, I walked back, and in a hundred yards I saw her ahead of me. I went up to her and asked how much for one turon. “Sixteen – one six – pesos,” she replied. (That’s about 30 cents.) I bought six, thanked her and walked home, smiling again.
Perhaps Spirit was reminding me that She is always present in little things. Love takes many forms. So does fear. When I can live from love and not from fear, there is Spirit.
[I wrote this today for the Quaker newsletter, What Canst Thou Say? The prompt for the upcoming issue is: “How is Spirit moving in your life today?”]
Casa Gorordo is a mansion built in the 1850s and inhabited by two elite families until 1979, when it was acquired by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation which now manages it. We first visited in 2018.
Casa Gorordo has since had a face lift. Brightly painted walls face onto the interior garden
Photo by Lina Hervas
and a wonderful breezy upstairs terrace greets the visitors.
Photo by Lina Hervas
Casa Gorordo uses technology really well. This is a still photo of a changing tableau, a street scene from the colonial era. Laborers, merchants, officials and wealthy citizens walk through a market area. The scene takes about five minutes to “loop.” It is delightful.
Artifacts are beautifully displayed, well lit against a dark background.
The salakot or sarok in CebuanoTwo kinds of machete or bolo: the one on the left more multi-purpose, used not only in farming but for butchering meat and self-defense. These are essential tools for the farmer not only in cutting wood and sugar cane but in loosening the soil and removing weeds.Bamboo tubes for collecting the sap of the coconut tree which is fermented into tubaStone and wooden mortarsA cacao “presser”: the roasted cacao beans are crushed and rolled out, then formed into tablets called tablea.What is it?A coffee grinder!A wooden mill for grinding grainA stone counterpartPaddles and a trap for catching fish in flooded paddies
Before going upstairs, the visitor walks through a room that once stored the family’s carriages and, later, their cars.
A cow draws a cart loaded with the abaca fiber used to make “Manila hemp” rope.A carabao or water buffalo pulls a sled loaded with rope.A horse-drawn calesa or carriageAs in the nearby Jesuit House, rotten posts had to be replaced.Dark and light wood alternates in the upstairs floor.Lina remembers lace curtains like these from her childhood! The windows are made of capiz, a thin and translucent shell.In the family chapel, a charming picture of a girl in her confirmation dressAnd in the bathroom, a large freestanding tub! I love the graceful curve of this postthat is incorporated into the formal geometry of an office.An essential kitchen tool resembles a primitive animal sculpture. It is made for sittingand the “business end” of the tool shows the teeth used to scrape the meat from a coconut shell.A magnificent table setting in a dining room at the end of a series of upstairs rooms: these parallel the outdoor terrace that you saw above.Spectacles and a boxed set of creta laevis colored pencils from E. Wolff & Son in England. https://pencilfodder.com/2023/05/01/e-wolff-sons-academy-chalk-pencil/
The elites of Cebu and the rest of the Philippines were not only very wealthy but well educated and well traveled – many studied overseas, especially in Spain. The national hero, José Rizal (full name José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda) attended the best schools in Manila and then became a student in Madrid, Paris and Heidelberg.
His two novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, perhaps original editions, are displayed at Casa Gorordo. Written in Spanish, they criticized Spanish colonial rule and in particular the Catholic Church, and they inspired both peaceful reformers and revolutionaries. His writing led to Rizal’s conviction on charges of rebellion, sedition and conspiracy. He was executed by firing squad in 1896, at the age of 35. The fact that these books are displayed probably indicates the family’s sympathy with the cause of Philippine independence.
Rizal was a remarkable man. “Documented studies show Rizal to be a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects. He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright and journalist. Besides poetry and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying degrees of expertise, in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting.” He was “conversant” in twenty-two languages! To learn more about him, you can begin here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Rizal
In that post I referenced the Jesuit House and Casa Gorordo. The next two posts will share photo galleries from our visits to those two museums on Saturday, March 2.
The entrance to a hardware warehouse conceals a treasure.
The Museo Parían sa Sugbu is in the Parían district of Cebu City, once called Sugbu. Parían is the area of the old city that the Spanish colonial administrators designated for the Chinese and Chinese-Filipino inhabitants.
It is also called the 1730 Jesuit House, as it was in this building that the Jesuits first established themselves.
Here is the history of the house. In case you have trouble reading the sign below: “The oldest dated house in the Philippines was hidden in plain sight inside a warehouse in Cebu’s Parían district for many years. Jaime Sy, who owns the house and Ho Tong Hardware within the compound, stumbled upon its significance by accident. When he was in college, Sy was flipping through a book of old Jesuit houses in the Philippines by Fr. Repetti when he made out a structure that looked familiar. It turned out to be the family bodega (warehouse) in Cebu. A relief plaque bearing the date ‘Año 1730’ can be found on the inside wall above the main house’s entrance door. The house served as the provincial headquarters of the Jesuit missionaries before their expulsion from the Philippines in 1768. Sy’s father bought it from the Alvarez family who had it since the late 19th century. Don Jose Alvarez, the family patriarch, at one time leased the house to Cebu Governor Sergio Osmeña, who used it as a meeting place for Cebu’s elite.” [Osmeña later served as President of the Philippines (1944-46) during the period of government in exile and after liberation from the Japanese.]
Curious about the expulsion of the Jesuits, I found this link: https://takayamaukon.com/2017/09/01/were-the-jesuits-ever-expelled-from-the-philippines/ “The historian Ida Altman writes: ‘Monarchies attempting to centralize and secularize political power viewed the Jesuits as being too international, too strongly allied to the papacy, and too autonomous from the monarchs in whose territory they operated.’ …. After their restoration by Pope Pius VII in 1814, the Jesuits returned to most of the places from which they had been expelled. In the Philippines, it took another 45 years to effect the return — in 1859.”
Here’s the arched entrance to the old Jesuit House.
A diorama shows the Parían Church (destroyed by order of the Spanish friars as the Chinese Catholics were becoming too powerful) and the buildings that surrounded it. One of these was the Jesuit House.
Much of the exhibit tells the stories of the Parían District,
the flourishing trade with China that was centuries old when the Spanish arrived,
the Spanish trade and the galleon route from Acupulco to Manila and back,
and the missionary outreach to the Chinese community
and ultimately to China itself.
Cebu was the launching pad for Jesuit missionaries
including Padre Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a learned Jesuit who in 1601 was the first European to enter the Forbidden City in Beijing (according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Ricci). Ricci worked with Chinese colleagues to translate classics between Chinese and Latin. A scientist and cartographer as well as linguist, Ricci developed a deep understanding of Confucian values and presented Catholicism as the “completion” of the Confucian path.
An interesting sidelight from the article above: “Ricci was also the first European to learn about the Kaifeng Jews, being contacted by a member of that community who was visiting Beijing in 1605. Ricci never visited Kaifeng, Henan Province, but he sent a junior missionary there in 1608, the first of many such missions. In fact, the elderly Chief Rabbi of the Jews was ready to cede his power to Ricci, as long as he gave up eating pork, but Ricci never accepted the position.” [Nor, presumably, gave up eating pork.]
The Jesuit House also has a room that honors San Pedro Calungsod, a missionary catechist martyred in Guam in 1672, beatified in 2000 and canonized in 2012. He is one of two Filipino saints.
Bert, Danny, Lina and I sit as a huge table made of Philippine ironwood (Xanthostemon verdugonianusi or magkuno)
in a simple kitchen. The pots stand on tripods in a large bed of gravel, protection against the danger of fire.
A large Chinese style lunchbox or “tiffin” (a word I learned in Singapore and reference in the post “Murals”)A steamer for siomaiAn ice shaver for cold drinks: now we’d use this for halo-halo, a Filipino dessert similar to Hawaiian “shaved ice.”A fifty year old GE fan that still works!Beautiful hardwood floors in alternating dark and light planksMolave posts are joined by mortise and tenon.
In addition to the stories of centuries ago, the museum tells an inspiring modern story. This very old building sits in a swampy area and the posts that support it were found to be “floating.” In other words, they had rotted away.
This placard illustrates the process of restoration, which revealed artifacts centuries old. A restoration project became an archaeological dig.
Some old posts are displayed. The pointed ends had decayed and were no longer bearing any weight.
At great expense, and with tremendous care, the building was supported on jacks; the rotten sections cut out and removed; concrete footings poured as water was continuously pumped out of the excavated holes; and new cement posts (visible on the right) joined with the sound wood to support the building.
I find this story inspiring as it shows how far one person and one family would go to preserve an important historical legacy. Their care for the house includes an extensive fire protection system throughout the entire building. Fire is still a danger!
Since February 2, thirty days ago, Lina and I have been changing beds – and countries, cities or islands here in the Philippines – every two days. Our off days, like the one just described in “Guimaras,” are a pleasure, a chance to relax and see something new.
Travel days are tiring, but we approach them as another chance for a different experience: people and countryside glimpsed from the window of a bus. I have culled over 200 photos that Lina took on our trip from La Carlota in Negros Occidental to the port of San Carlos; across the strait to Toledo on the west coast of the island of Cebu; and across the mountainous spine of Cebu to the east coast. We left La Carlota at 5AM on March 1 and arrived in Cebu around 3PM. All but the first and last photos are Lina’s. I show them in the order they were taken.
I plead guilty to including too many photos and hope I compensate for the lack of editing by minimal commentary. I invite you to imagine you’re on a bus for hours, just watching life go by, and dozing from time to time. I will not be offended if you doze.
This first photo is a ringer. I took it on Monday (six days ago) on the way to Iloilo City from Tablas (an even longer travel day!). It illustrates the surprises that await around a corner: in this case, the view of lush green paddy in a small irrigated valley. Most of the rice paddies we have passed along roads in the Philippines are brown and dry, waiting for the rainy season to grow one crop of rice, but there are exceptions. The taller rice is beginning to turn yellow as it nears harvest, while the younger rice is the green I associate with Ireland.
Mt. Canlaon is a dormant volcano 8,087′ at its highest. It looms over the island of Negros, and here we see it at 5:48AM over huge fields of sugar cane.
Canlaon at 6:21AM, rice paddies in front and clouds gathering on top6:22AM6:27AMMany students travel to and from school on the public bus. 6:52AMA local fiesta parades a santo in the back of a pickup truck. 7:01AM“Maní, maní!” advertises boiled peanuts.Young sugar cane emerges from soil darkened by the ash of the cane debris burned after the last harvest.The view to the east coast of Negros from the height of the road at 8:10AMThis home has a business selling firewood and also delivering large jerrycans of water in two wooden push carts.A dwelling or a play tree house? I think a dwelling.Tobacco for sale in a local market A sacada or tapasero is cutting sugar cane at 8:57AM.Planting caneThese look like fish ponds but the aeration by spinning water wheels means they are shrimp ponds. Shrimp need more oxygen than the fish raised in ponds. It’s 9:04AM and we’re close to the port of San Carlos, where we will cross over to Cebu.
A delightful little girl entertained us by singing nursery school songs: “The wheels on the bus go round and round …. ” But it’s now 1:20PM and she has fallen asleep. We’ve almost reached Cebu City.
I’ve written about Canlaon before, in January, 2015. I put its elevation at 7,989′ then, but my map now says 8,087′. I doubt the mountain has become taller in nine years. It’s more likely I made a mistake.
A carinderia is a small restaurant along the street that displays the dishes it has prepared in large pots
and in a glass case.
Customers are welcome to lift the covers of the pots before they choose what they will eat.
Fried eggs and sausage are familiar fare in American diners.
The staple here is rice.
Now begins the delicious Filipino food! Tinola ng manok is a chicken soup made with vegetables such as green papaya or chayote and the tender leaves of malunggay (Moringa oleifera), a tree that grows in many yards. Ginger gives the soup a little kick.
We order small dishes of a local seaweed salad with tomato and onion,
a fritter of tiny fish bound with egg,
and tortang talong, flattened eggplant fried with an egg batter, made to order – wonderful!
All of this excellent food emerges from a small kitchen. The food is fresh, served in small portions so we can sample different dishes, and very cheap.
This entire breakfast cost $9 for four people
who enjoyed every bite!
I remember restaurants like this in Greece fifty years ago where food was cooked and displayed for customers. The meals are so good I hesitate to call these places, whether istoratorion in Greece or carinderia in the Philippines, “cafeterias,” though that is the style of service.
The only caution is not to eat there late in the day, when the last portions may have been sitting around for hours. But in the morning, no worries!
Lina and I took these photos in Cebu City on the morning of Saturday, March 2.
Cousin Jai took us on a tour of Guimaras last Tuesday. Guimaras lies just off the coast of Iloilo City. Jai knows the island well, as he has bicycled the circumferential road several times – a day long ride of 75 miles.
We began at a café / gallery where we saw an art exhibit. Iloilo has a lively arts scene.
A church devoted to San Isidro Labrador sits in Navalas, on the northern end of Guimaras. We entered the grounds through this archway.
The church is built of coral blocks. It looks old but is not. A local patron funded its construction between 1880 and 1885, not long before the Philippine Revolution and Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898.
An altar to San Isidro Labrador tells the story of a farmer born around 1070 near Madrid who worked as a young man for a wealthy landowner. Isidro was habitually late to work because he went to church every morning to pray. Yet he still managed to get the fields ploughed.
An angel was observed guiding the plow. This is one of the miracles that led to his canonization in 1622. We know his name in North America from Labrador in Canada!
San Isidro holds a wooden spade. Someone made off with the original, the sexton told us, and though they knew who the someone was, they never found the spade, so a new one was made. Isidro wears a local fiber bag around his neck.
Near by, Roca Encantada (Enchanted Rock) stands on a rocky promontory. It was built in 1910 as a gift from Señor Lopez to his wife Doña Presentacion Hofileña Lopez: a local Taj Mahal.
The house is not open for visitors, but the terraces are.
We look out over the sea to the islands named Siete Pecados or Seven Sins: the reincarnation of seven sisters who disobeyed their father’s command and drowned at sea. An interesting parallel to the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, who also have many stories told about them!
Jai took us next to a wind farm in the interior of Guimaras. Perhaps fifty towers and turbines generate power that is sold to the grid.
At a distance, I didn’t appreciate the size of the towers. If you look carefully, you can see Lina just to the right of the tower, her head above the hills on the horizon.
Two boys walk home under the whooshing of the turbines.
Our last stop – a fruit stand where Guimaras’s fabled mangoes are displayed. Guimaras claims the best mangoes in the Philippines (and perhaps the world?). Its Mango Festival attracts visitors from afar for two weeks in May.
Journeys 